Minister Calleary meets farm groups to discuss plans to make farms safer

Minister for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, TD, who is responsible for national policy on occupational Health and Safety, met farming and insurance interests today (Wednesday) in the second of a series of meetings to address the serious situation that exists about health and safety on farms.

To date, there have been 10 farm-related deaths this year.

Tomorrow, (Thursday 13) as part of his ongoing engagement with farming interests, the Minister will participate in a farm walk at the premises of Mr William Duffy Oldtown Co Dublin who has kindly facilitated the Minister and the farming interests in identifying the potential hazardous events or occurrences that exist on farms.

This farm walk is the first in a series that will be organised around the country during the course of the year. Minister Calleary has strongly encouraged farmers to attend.

At a previous meeting the Minister asked the farm organizations to coordinate their efforts and come back to him with their plans in 4 weeks.

Since that meeting, the Minister has received a range of submissions outlining the plans of the various bodies.

Today, he asked for delivery on those plans on the ground. He said that both he and the HSA would monitor the situation over the next 6 months to see how the various proposals were being implemented.

Last month, the Health and Safety Authority conducted a special two-week inspection campaign on farms carrying out over 293 farm-related inspections bringing the total to date this year to 710. Levels of awareness of safety and health have increased to a significant degree and are now approaching 80%.

While the Authority has been encouraged in seeing a significant increase in the number of farmers (c65%) who are meeting their legal requirement to have either a safety statement or a code of practice for their farm, it noted that there is significant lack of follow-through in implementation of these on the ground.

The HSA inspections show that there is a continuing failure to fully and adequately address the main known hazards on many farms particularly in the areas of machinery safety and slurry handling.

The Minister said: “The challenge facing us all, the farming bodies and the Health and Safety Authority alike, is how to translate the increased levels of awareness into reducing the number of deaths and injuries on farms.

‘Unfortunately, we have already had 10 farm-related deaths this year. I have said it in the past and I want to repeat it again, we need to change the whole culture in relation to farm safety and I look forward to the active implementation of these plans in order to achieve that goal.

‘We all have to work together to achieve this. None of us can do it on our own.”.

ENDS/LA365